


The Time Lord's Prologue and Tale

by MrProphet



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet
Summary: Obviously, this fic was overtaken by canon, but I like it enough to put it here anyway.





	The Time Lord's Prologue and Tale

With a soft chime, the TARDIS landed.

“We’re here,” the Doctor said. He went to the doors and opened them. “Don’t go outside,” he added. “We’re not actually standing on anything.”

Martha walked up beside him and looked out. “Well that’s… dark.”

“It’s there.” The Doctor pointed to a darkness against the darkness.

“That’s it”

“That’s Gallifrey.”

*

‘They say there was a chance, right back at the beginning, to turn the whole thing around.

‘It was the Chancellor who had the dream, the night before the first assault. He saw Gallifrey hanging in space, glowing like a firefly, and a great wolf with slavering jaws bounded out of the sky and swallowed her up. A wolf; it’s funny how that imagery has persisted.

‘What was it? A premonition? A warning from the future? An undigested crumb of cheese? The Chancellor didn’t know, but he went to the President with his fears and maybe if the Time Lords hadn’t been in quite such a mess already they would have acted in time, but the trouble was that they were in a mess.

‘That was in the Year of Five Presidents, at least two of whom were Lady Romanadvoratrelunda of the House of Hearts’ Haven, and all Gallifrey was in an uproar. Rival powers were at the Time Lords’ throats, there were terrorists in the Academy and weird temporal plagues and weapons cropping up here, there and everywhere. Sections of the Anomaly Vaults kept on disappearing, the BDE Archive was in a shambles and the President didn’t have time for any prophetic dreams, even if it wasn’t illegal to act on information from the future.

‘Ah, yes; that was the first commandment, right up before ‘thou shalt not interfere unless thou hast a convincing set of reasons, a good excuse and all the right forms filled out in triplicate’: ‘the history of Gallifrey must remain pure’. We set ourselves up as the yardstick of the cosmos, we couldn’t go shuffling the inches around at the drop of a hat.

‘So the dream was filed under ‘Y’ for ‘you’ll remember this when it’s too late’. No-one even thought of sending reinforcements to the battle TARDIS flotilla facing off against a detachment of Monan Host Ships in the Lupus Expanse. Not until the Daleks arrived, sliced through the Host fleet and turned the face off into a shooting war.

‘Once they punched through there, the Daleks disengaged on every other front and poured their forces into the temporal field. If we’d held at Lupus… But you can’t second guess these things. Not unless you want to go mad.’

*

“And that’s what happened?” Martha asked, looking out from the TARDIS door at the blackened smudge hanging against the dark of space.

“That’s what happened. In the end.”

“Can we go down?”

The Doctor shook his head. “I had to come back, but this is as close as we can get. It’s still burning,” he said. “Under the crust, the fires are still going. It won’t be cool enough to walk on for… well, forever. Those flames won’t ever go out and they burn back as well as forward, turning everything to ash; here and now, in the future and in the past.”

“That’s terrible,” Martha gasped.

“That’s a Time War,” he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, this fic was overtaken by canon, but I like it enough to put it here anyway.


End file.
